‘Won’t he be too heavy for the plane?’ Roger wondered.
‘No,’ said the warden. ‘You have a 250-horsepower engine there. It will lift two and a half tons. That okapi can’t weigh more than a quarter of a ton.’
The zebra-giraffe-antelope had never been in a spot like this in all his thirty million years. He whinnied like a worried horse and banged his head about against the bamboo slats, which bent when they were struck, so they did him no harm.
Crosby stripped a leafy branch from a tree and laid it on top of the cage so that the leaves hung down between the slats. The okapi at once coiled a twelve-inch ribbon of tongue round the leaves and drew them down within reach of the grinding teeth. So long as he had his favourite food, he could tolerate his strange environment.
The mild-mannered colobus did not need to be caged. Roger climbed into the plane with the monkey in his arms. With the curiosity natural to an intelligent animal, it examined the instrument board closely, then climbed back over Roger’s shoulder to the top of the okapi’s cage from which point it made a close examination of every inch of the cabin. When the engine began to roar it plopped back into Roger’s lap and peered about anxiously as the plane thundered up over the treetops.
Hal followed the red road north-west to Nairobi, then turned north towards the dazzling snows of 17,000-foot Mount Kenya. Helped by a tail wind, he made the three-hundred-mile flight in two hours, then came down on a small but open landing field at the edge of the Aberdare forest.
Here was the Outspan Hotel where arrangements must be made to enter the game reserve and spend the night at Treetops.
They had scarcely touched the ground when they were greeted by the hotel’s white hunter who introduced himself with ‘Call me Geoffrey’.
The okapi was left in the plane with plenty of leaves for supper and breakfast.
‘He’ll be all right there,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Well look after him. Now, if you’ll climb into this jeep, we’ll be off.’
With Roger holding the colobus, the car slithered over a muddy forest trail for three miles, then came to a stop at the end of the road. Great trees towered all about.
‘Now we have a quarter-mile walk to Treetops,’ said Geoffrey.
They followed a narrow track among the forest giants. The colobus was getting more and more excited. These tall trees offered it an ideal home. The air cooled by the snows of Mount Kenya was bound to please an animal with a coat of fur so warm and thick.
‘What’s that ladder for?’ asked Roger, noticing a ladder nailed to a tree. Farther down the trail was another - and then another.
‘I’m afraid you’re going to find out right now,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Quick - climb that ladder.’
‘Why?’
‘No time for questions and answers. Get up there fast.’
Roger climbed, the colobus clinging to his shoulder. Close behind came Hal and Geoffrey. There was, a crashing sound in the forest, then five loudly trumpeting elephants came charging out of the gloom.
‘Higher,’ shouted Geoffrey.
They climbed until Roger reached the end of the ladder. The upstretched trunks of the elephants did not quite touch Geoffrey’s feet.
‘Now you know what the ladders are for,’ said Geoffrey. ‘I should have explained - it’s a rule of this trail. Climb eight feet high in case of rhino or buffalo, eighteen feet if it’s an elephant’
‘Are they really so savage?’
‘The rhinos and buffaloes can be. You never know about the elephant. He may be just trying to tease you -or he may mean business. If some poacher has pinged him with an arrow, he will revenge himself on any human he happens to see.’
‘What do we do now?’
‘Just wait.’
‘How long?’
‘It may be five minutes, it may be five hours. You can’t hurry an elephant. They’ll go when they’re ready.’ it was not the most comfortable place to wait, thought Roger - clinging to a ladder with a heavy monkey glued to your shoulder.
The elephants were in no hurry. They put in their time tearing up bushes and swallowing them, leaves, twigs, roots, and all. They glanced up now and then to make sure their quarry was still there.
The colobus was getting restless. It threw back its head and stared upwards. Gradually Roger realized that there was something alive above him. He looked up and could see nothing at first but a little movement of the leaves at the top of the tree.
Then he saw a face peering down. It was a black face with a white ring all about it. It must belong to a colobus monkey. Other faces like it appeared. The animals chattered down an invitation for Roger’s colobus to come and join them. ‘Shall I let it go?’ Roger asked Geoffrey. ‘This is as good a place as any,’ said Geoffrey. ‘The colobus monkeys are a very friendly sort. They’ll give your friend the red-carpet treatment I’m sure.’
Roger was already fond of this gentle creature, but knew it would be better off with its own kind.
Hanging on with one hand, he used the other to shift the animal over on to a branch beside his head. The colobus sat on the branch and looked long and thoughtfully at Roger. Then it climbed up branch by branch to the welcoming party above. There was a new burst of happy talk when it arrived and there was no doubt that the stranger had at once been adopted as a full member of the Aberdare colony.
‘Don’t look so blue,’ said Geoffrey. ‘You’ll probably see it again. The monkeys come down to drink every night at the Treetops lake.’
The elephants had wandered off. The march to Treetops was resumed. Now they could see it through the trees, and it was a strange sight. A hotel floating in the air! It was perched fifty feet above the ground in the top branches of a big tree and it moved slightly backwards and forwards as the tree swayed in the wind. A wooden stairway something like a spider’s web hung from the door down to the ground.
It was like a six-storey building with the lower five storeys removed. It was as if wreckers had destroyed all of a building for fifty feet up but had forgotten to take the top floor. There it seemed to float in the sky, defying the laws of gravity.
Directly in front of the hotel was a small lake completely surrounded by forest. The boys had heard much about this famous place. They knew that at night all sorts of animals came out of the forest to drink at the lake and root around in the mud for salt. You could look down on them from the balcony of the hotel and if you made no sound they would not be aware of your presence.
Many notable people had slept in this little hotel in the sky.
‘Queen Elizabeth has been here, I believe,’ Hal said.
‘Yes - but she was Princess Elizabeth when she came. During the night she got word that her father the king had died and she was queen.’
‘And Prince Philip?’
‘He has visited us several times. Of course he is the strongest man we have in the whole movement for the protection of African wild life. Come along - we’ll go upstairs.’
They approached the cobweb. The boys were surprised to find that the lowest twelve feet of it were missing - or, at least, these steps had been drawn up out of reach.
Geoffrey pressed a button and the steps came down. After they had climbed them, he pressed another button and up they went like the companion-way of a ship when it is about to sail.
‘What’s the idea?’ Hal inquired.
Tf they’re not up out of the way the big animals will smash them or the small animals will climb them. So we hoist that section out of reach.’
‘Like the drawbridge of a castle,’ Hal said.
They climbed the rest of the steps to this castle in the clouds and entered the hotel door.
Geoffrey introduced them to the manager and they were assigned a room.
In comparison with most hotels, this one was tiny, accommodating only twelve guests - yet as a treehouse it was surprisingly large. It swayed when the tree swayed.
If any guest stepped heavily the whole structure trembled.
Outside the boys’ room w
as a balcony from which they could look straight down to the beach of the little lake. There was a stairway to the roof where one had an unobstructed view in all directions.
Chapter 19
House of whispers
It was a house of whispers. Signs warned that any sound would disturb the game. The white hunter whispered, the guests whispered, the servants whispered. Everyone wore rubber-soled shoes. It was the rule. Tackies (tennis shoes) could be bought if you did not have a pair.
‘But there’s one thing I don’t understand,’ Hal said to Geoffrey. ‘Even though the animals can’t hear us, surely they can smell us. We’re only fifty feet away.’
If we were down on their level they would certainly get our scent - perhaps even if we were a quarter of a mile away. But here, fifty feet above them, the air currents carry our scent high above their heads. They don’t know we exist - unless we make a noise. This is no place for a person with a cold. One cough, and all the animals scamper into the forest. But they come back. They love this place. The soil in that beach happens to be full of salt. All animals need salt - except the meat eaters. They get it from the meat they eat.’
An excellent dinner was served at the long table in the dining-room. Then every one of the twelve guests slipped out silently on to the balcony and sat to look down on the pageant below. All wore heavy clothing, and some had wrapped themselves in blankets stripped from their beds, for the mountain air at an altitude of seven thousand feet was cold in spite of the fact that Treetops was almost on the equator.
Darkness veiled the scene. But suddenly a powerful floodlight was turned on. It illuminated the beach and the edge of the lake. Two busy pigs, a wart-hog, and a Stately waterbuck had already arrived. They looked up into the light. Perhaps they were surprised to see the sun shining at that hour of the night, but they were not frightened. They could not see the balcony and the spectators, for the hotel was now completely dark. They went back to their search for salt.
Four rhinos came on the scene. They eagerly sucked up the salty mud. Others joined them. They quarrelled over the choicest mudholes, pushed and jostled each other, made angry blowing sounds and a peculiar blast that sounded like a loud snore. Their ears went round like radar screens picking up signals. A slight cough of one of the guests sent them galumphing off.
Soon they were back, or others like them, chasing each other, making a puff-puff-puff like a steam locomotive. They also snorted like a horse, but with rhino power instead of horsepower.
Now came the elephants, great lumbering monsters, wading into the lake and throwing water up over their dusty hides, then coming out to insert the delicate tips of their trunks into deep footprints made by the rhinos. There they found salt and conveyed it to their mouths. They blinked now and then at the floodlight but evidently took it for the moon or for a sun that had forgotten to set.
Unlike the hot-tempered rhinos, the elephants did not interfere with each other. And when a baby elephant poked its trunk into a hole already being explored by an adult, the big one let the little fellow have it.
Five shaggy buffaloes now came on the stage and they proved as hot-tempered as the rhinos. Soon the beach was a battlefield where the weapons were rhino horns against the harder, sharper horns of the buffaloes, and the night resounded with their grunting and trumpeting.
The elephants didn’t like the squabble and finally all joined in a screaming charge that sent the misbehavers flying into the forest.
A giraffe came out to drink. He had to spread his legs far apart to get his head down to the water. The lake was surrounded now by graceful antelopes of many sorts; impalas, Tommies, Grant’s, kudu, waterbuck, and klip-springer. These charming and dainty animals took care not to get under the feet of the monsters.
‘Look. There they come,’ whispered Roger.
The visitors both boys had been eagerly waiting for slipped out of the forest into the light. They were the colobus monkeys. What lovely creatures they were with their white-ringed faces, their rich silky fur and magnificent white tails! No wonder they were so loved by fashionable ladies that they were being slaughtered at the rate of more than ten thousand a month.
Roger strained his eyes. Was his friend among them? He borrowed a pair of binoculars from Geoffrey.
Yes - there was no mistake about it - he could make out on the neck of one of them a line where the wire noose had rubbed away the fur and cut into the flesh.
The trusting creature he had held on his lap seemed to be equally happy with its new friends. Roger felt a pang of jealousy but was instantly ashamed of it. The pretty creature that might have made such a good pet was where it belonged, with others of its own sort, and among the great trees it loved.
The boys kept vigil most of the night - then returned to their cots to dream of what they had seen.
At breakfast Hal said to Geoffrey, ‘What a wonderful idea it was - to build a treehouse over this pool.’
Geoffrey agreed. ‘Only a person with a good imagination would have thought of it. It was a woman, you know. A certain Lady Bettie Walker came here with friends long before this was made a National Park. She had been reading Swiss Family Robinson. You remember, the treehouse described in that book. That gave her the idea for Treetops. It seemed a crazy idea to some of her friends.’
‘Crazy or not, it’s great. I hate to leave but we’d better begetting along. We have a big day ahead.’
Back to the plane and the patient okapi, nibbling a leafy breakfast. The flight over the great lion country of the Serengeti Plain to Mwanza on the south shore of Lake Victoria took two hours.
There, Hal chartered the only craft available, a clumsy raft with a wheezy outboard motor, and set out on the fifteen-hour passage to Rubondo I sland.
Warden Crosby’s prediction that there would be five storms during the fifteen hours proved wrong. There was only one storm - but it lasted fifteen hours.
A strong north wind sweeping down the 250-mile length of the mighty lake brought big waves that washed across the raft, sousing boys and okapi alike. The boys were not allowed to forget that among all the freshwater lakes of the world only Superior is greater than Victoria. This lake deserved to be named after England’s great queen and had all the majesty one had a right to expect of the source of the mighty Nile.
The okapi had certainly never made such a trip before and whinnied his strong disapproval. The constant tossing of the raft made the animal seasick and up came the leaves. The cage had been firmly lashed to the logs, yet the force of the waves against it seemed about to tear it loose at any moment.
Victoria is a lake of hidden reefs, lying just below the surface. Time and again the raft stumbled to a halt on a sand-bar. Sometimes reversing the engine would back it off. Sometimes this was not good enough and the boys must jump off and push the raft free. If on these occasions a six-foot wave came along and completely buried you, that was just part of the game.
One must keep a sharp look out for the crocodiles and hippos that infest the lake. Several times there was a wild scramble back on to the logs as the swish of a great tail signalled the approach of a croc. The hippos did not like the storm water and lurked in the lee of small islands. Not being carnivores, they preferred reeds to humans as their diet - nevertheless they were dangerous as the boys found out when one came up beneath the raft, hoisting it three feet into the air before it slid off edgewise into the water. Whether the great beast performed this feat just for fun, or with evil intent, the navigators did not stop to ask. They merely congratulated themselves that the raft had not been turned upside down.
The troubles of the day became a nightmare as darkness settled on the wild waters of the lake. A light far ahead marked Rubondo I sland. Sometimes it disappeared entirely behind rain and mist. Then only guess-work steered the raft. After a time the light would reappear off one quarter or the other and the course could be corrected.
Three exhausted sailors finally brought their craft into a fairly quiet cove of Rubondo and heard a welcomi
ng shout from the wharf.
The warden, who introduced himself with ‘Just call me Tony’, helped them put the cage ashore. ‘What have you got in there?’
‘An okapi.’
‘Wonderful. Male or female?’
It seemed an odd question. What did it matter?
‘Male,’ Hal said.
‘Good. We have just one okapi on the island and it’s a female. Now we have a chance of breeding more. Mighty rare animal, the okapi. You can be sure we’ll handle this one with kid gloves. Wait till I get a towel.’
He ran to his small rustic cabin and came back with a towel. It was not for the shivering boys, but to dry the precious okapi. The cage was cautiously opened and the animal brought out on to the wharf.
Tony went over every inch of the hide with the towel, rubbing briskly to stimulate circulation. ‘There - he’ll do,’ said Tony finally.
‘Should we feed him?’ said Hal.
‘No need. He can’t go ten feet in these woods without finding food. And as for water, he has a whole lake of
it’
‘So we just let him go?’ inquired Roger, always sorry
to lose a pet.
“That’s the best thing for him. Just let him make his own way. He’ll be pretty safe. He has no enemies on this island - no lions, leopards, or poachers. A good many rhinos have been brought here for safe keeping, but they won’t bother your okapi. This is as close to heaven as any okapi will ever get.’
The okapi was already eagerly moving off into his heaven.
Hal had a pang of regret as he saw ten thousand dollars walking away. He and Roger had been sent to Africa to get animals for their animal-collector father who would then sell them to zoos. It seemed a pity to lose this one. But Hal was aware that few okapi had ever survived the journey to America. The important thing right now was not to capture an animal or two for their father, but to do everything possible to stop the killing of the thousands of animals of East Africa. In the long run that would do more for their business of animal-collecting than anything else they could do.
08 Safari Adventure Page 10